“A bend in the road, is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.” ~ Helen Keller

More of an observation on life than specific to travel, this one, but I’ve often found it applies even more so when you are away from home, exploring somewhere unfamiliar. In that situation, it’s so easy to stumble across something unexpected – whether it’s a minor inconvenience such as a closed attraction you wanted to visit, or something more fundamental such as a cancelled flight or lost hotel room booking.

How you handle the unexpected bumps and bends on the road can make a huge difference to how much you enjoy your trip overall. I’m not always the calmest when it comes to such incidents, but luckily for me, Pete is both laid back and calming, whilst also practical and once I’ve got over the shock or disappointment or anger, we put our heads together and decide what to do.

Have you hit an unforeseen bend in the road while travelling? What happened and how did you make the turn?

Iceland is a perfect destination for a self-drive tour – the country’s N1 route circles around the main landmass, missing only the West Fjords in the North West. We visited in summer, when the days were bright and long and the roads easy to drive. The N1 hugs the coast in the South and South East of the island, but even where it doesn’t, there are often smaller roads you can divert onto to explore the hinterland and coastline around the rest of Iceland. The views on a sunny day are spectacular and the roads wonderfully empty too.

Helen never disappoints with her wonderful word, and I completely agree with you that this applies to life in general as well as travel. Just last year I had to cancel a dream trip, and then ended up doing a road-trip instead – the memories from the road-trip are now etched for the lifetime. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, but then something else will work out…

Of course! Probably the worst was when I lost my debit card on the second day of a three week long trip. I was traveling solo, but luckily I was meeting up with various friends along my trip. I was able to send those friends money via PayPal and then they just gave me cash. And I used my credit card for whatever I could.

I agree that how you handle situations while traveling determines the outcome. We have had some bad things happen and we just rolled with it. In the end it all worked out and we had some great times. When we went to Catskill Mountain we were expecting to dry camp for free, but couldn’t find a free spot to camp. We went down a dead end road while towing our travel trailer and almost got stuck. The transmission was overheating and I decided we just needed to stop anywhere to let it cool down. The camp right near the dead end street was full, but the host took pity on us due to the difficulties we had getting there. She allowed us to take a reserved emergency site as long as we agreed to share it with firefighters or police if needed. Well we didn’t have to share the site during our stay and it was an amazing camp with great people and a cool dinosaur rock to see. We were so happy our bend in the road turned into a great destination!

Agreed! I think traveling is a great way of teaching you to work on your behavior and reactions in unexpected situations. Over the time, I got a lot calmer and reacted cooler to a lost credit card, or missed flight than I would have before I started traveling!

What a great quote. I wish I was better about roadblocks and bends, but tears, anger and frustration are often involved. Sigh. But the good things about travel always trump the problems and even if you go off the bend, you brush yourself off and try again.

This is such a great quote! And this is why I love traveling, because you learn how to deal with hiccups (and life). I remember going to an attraction in Copenhagen, only to find out it was closed for the season. Since it was about dinner time I decided to look for a place to eat, and ended up having the best meal of my time in the city. So although I was initially upset about the attraction, I had to be thankful for finding that restaurant.